Week 36

Here are some highlights from Technology this week:

Week 36 (May 21 – May 25, 2018)

Thursday Giggles:            Did you hear about the two silkworms in a race?
   They wound up in a tie.

Thank you so much for letting me be a part of your sites this year.  I had a great year.  You were welcoming and kind.  You made me feel like a part of your teams.  Your generous, welcoming dispositions made this transition a beautiful one.  You make us #ClovisUnifiedStrong.

GIFT CARD GIVEAWAY:  If you were one of the 67-teachers in my rotation this year, you received an email asking for feedback.  Please let me know your thoughts.  Deadline for that survey is TODAY @ 3:24pm.  Check your email inbox for that link.  You could win a gift card!!  Wahooo!!

Can you departmentalize at the elementary level?  What are the pros and the cons?  Angela Watson tackles this very idea in THIS POST.  Click back there to see what she has to say.

Image credits: Screen capture from her site.

What if??  So, let’s consider a rotational model for just a minute (departmentalize).  What might that look like?  In Georgia, elementary students rotate through “periods” just like junior high students.  They have a Science teacher.  They have a History/Geography teacher.  They aren’t in the same class all day like our students.  What might be the benefits?  What if you aren’t amazing at teaching Math, but your colleague is?  What if you’re amazing at teaching Technology, but your colleague isn’t?  What would be best for students?  Have you considered the rotational model?  What if your students rotate from classroom to classroom to receive what is best for them?  What would that look like?  But, what if there are four teachers in the model?  It might seem odd, but teachers from different grade levels could actually work together to make a model that could work for more than one grade level.  The fourth and the third grade teachers could actually swap kids.  Don’t be confined by grade level.  That’s just a number.  Teach skills to kids—any kids.

But how would you collaborate seamlessly?  Efficiently?  How is that possible?  What about communication with parents?  Here are three tools that come to mind:

a) Google Sites.  I would design a website so that ALL parents could come to one place.  I would share permissions so that all three or four teachers could have the power to make changes to the site at any time.  Now, every parent has access to ALL the information.  PDF files, documents, resources, tabs, links, you name it.  VIDEO TUTORIAL.
b) OneNote.  I would use Microsoft OneNote as a teacher-to-teacher communication tool.  This would house my teaching notes so that everyone knows what each teacher is doing.  Create tabs inside your digital, online binder and record your scope and sequence.  Make notes where needed.  Live online document for collaboration. VIDEO TUTORIAL.  ANOTHER VIDEO TUTORIAL.
c) Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets.  I would use either of these tools to keep track of grades online seamlessly.  I can update grades as soon as they are recorded by the other teacher, live right now, from any location.  It’s a fluid and live document that can get updated anywhere, anytime. DOCUMENT HERE.  VIDEO TUTORIAL.  COPY TUTORIAL (How do I make a copy of your document?).

Image Credits: Screen capture from YouTube from my video (link above).

And how is this possible; who has time?!  You see, you now have FEWER preps.  You teach fewer lessons—the same one three times.  You’re grading fewer kinds of papers each week.  Not 20 keys.  Just a few.

What about parent communication? Your class website and your school website both house all the information needed for parents.  Add Remind to that list and send out text messages as needed.  The homeroom teacher is still the primary point of contact.  But, the other teachers share their information with parents as well.

What about SST's and IEP’s?  The homeroom teacher is always responsible for that, but now you may have data that is consistent over three teachers and not just one.  Child X blurts out in differing environments.  Child X is consistently out of his/her seat and talking during instruction per the notes of these other teachers as well.

But, how about grades?  How can we keep that straight?  I mentioned this earlier.  Here is a sample document.  Check out this link and see what it looks like.  I have coded many of those cells so that the data syncs at the end for you.  Now, you would still be responsible for putting that data into Zanlge/Q yourself.

So do you believe that Technology should be its own self-contained class experience and not integrated into subject areas?  No!  Quite the opposite.  Yet, I find that it is helpful to maximize skills in concentrated whole-class experiences.  And since we aren’t a 1:1 district yet, we have to come up with a reasonable workaround.  If two of your classes have access to laptops at one time, then you only need 60 in lieu of 90.  I agree with the Blended Learning Model where there is a combination of paper and computers all day long.  I am also an advocate for the Flipped Classroom Model.  YouTube Playlist here.

Do you not believe in blending curriculum standards?  Everything feels so separate.  My illustration could give you that idea, unfortunately.  However, that is not my intent.  You can bring in History standards into Reading and Writing seamlessly and you can bring Technology into it as well.  The model above is just a sample.  It certainly doesn’t have to look exactly like that.  And, this model is based on three teachers.  If you had four teachers, maybe there would be two pairs in a scenario like that.  One teacher takes History, Reding, and Writing.  The other teacher takes Science, Math, and Technology.  Each teacher now only has three preps, not six.  Teach the same thing twice.  Make teaching session number two more awesome!  Learn from your first session.

Maybe these aren’t perfect for you next year, but consider the possibilities and see if this will work for you the following year or the year after that.  Find other people who are doing this and ask them questions.  They’ll probably tell you that they weren’t perfect the first time and they learned from their mistakes.  Don’t we all?

Team, thanks again!

Kindly,